The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Ponting and Gilchrist's feat

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 14, 2006

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Sport - Cricket

Ponting and Gilchrist's feat

Dubai: Ricky Ponting and Adam Gilchrist joined a select club of batsmen while Bangladesh's Habibul Bashar, Mohammad Rafique and Shahriar Nafees made huge leaps in ICC Player Rankings after the memorable first Test in Fatullah.

Ponting and Gilchrist, whose centuries saw world champion Australia win the match, joined the list of players who have scored hundreds against the other nine ICC Test-playing rivals.

The others in the list are Steve Waugh, Rahul Dravid, Gary Kirsten, Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara and Marvan Atapattu.

There was another record set by Gilchrist when he hit the first of his six sixes in his first innings century.

Most sixes in Tests

It was Gilchrist's 88th six in Test cricket and he moved ahead of New Zealand's Chris Cairns, who had clouted 87 sixes in 62 Tests, to become the holder of the record for most sixes in Test cricket.

Gilchrist ended his innings with a career tally of 93 sixes.

Left-arm spinner Mohammad Rafique, whose nine wickets in the Fatullah Test came so close to earning his side victory, is now 26th in the bowling list, up 10 places, and he is comfortably the highest-ranked Bangladesh bowler.

Captain Habibul Bashar, who made 76 in the first innings, is up two places to 29th and, like Rafique, is his country's highest-placed player.

Nafees' maiden hundred propelled him up 45 places to 59th position. Shane Warne's relatively modest return in the Test, three wickets, has seen him slip to fourth place in the Test bowlers' chart. — Agencies

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